The Wardrobe by Marina Deller
CONTENT WARNING: This piece of visual memoir deals directly with themes of grief and death.
The Wardrobe
Transcript:
1.
I knew you were dead.
I knew it when Dad called me to tell me and, honestly, I sort of knew before that too. I’m not sure how, but I did. I felt it.
I knew you were gone when I kissed your cold forehead goodbye and felt only cool flesh.
Not you, not anymore.
I knew you were turned to ash because I went with Dad to pick you up from the crematorium. They put you in a beige plastic container. I remember it as a big milk carton; the kind we used to have at home. You need lots of milk when you’ve got six kids. Six kids who love cereal. A mother who loves cooking. You need lots of milk.
Dad put you in the walk-in wardrobe.
I didn’t ask why – I just assumed it was temporary. Just until we could fling you to the wind like we did with your mum. We sprinkled her ashes over the sea. Right off the end of the jetty. I was so scared of that jetty
2.
the gaps so big I was convinced I’d slip right through.
3.
She became part of the salt and foam. I remember walking from her house to that jetty. I remember
pomegranates in her garden,
and the sound of the train,
and watching her draw.
I remember good things.
4.
I hate to think of you in that wardrobe. It wasn’t even yours for very long. Not like the one before – where silk scarves burst from drawers, where you let me pick your outfits for your book launch, where the cats slept on your best winter coat (you let them lie).
That was your wardrobe, it was full of you. The new one was merely clothes. Clothes you couldn’t wear when the sickness whittled you down to bones. When you couldn’t lift your arms above your head anymore.
After I left – after Dad told me to go – I didn’t ask after you/your body/your ashes. I think I tried, once. To say something like, ‘can we scatter Mum’s ashes, please?’ but I’m not really sure if I said that or if I just thought it.
5.
And now we mostly talk in emails, his preferred form of communication. So oddly formal. A strange place to talk about your body as ash.
6.
When I left that house I thought of you in that plastic container. I think about it now. I hated to think of you in that wardrobe. I still hate it now. But where else can I find you?
7.
At first, I thought I’d find you online. But Dad deleted your Facebook. Apparently you asked him to, which is fair enough, really. But it happened without warning and it shocked me to see a pixelated grey shape where your face once was.
I used to visit our chat – read and reread and rereread the memes about knitting. The messages I sent you when you were in hospital. The little ‘I love yous’ which feel big, so big, now.
I’d visit those messages like I was visiting you. Sometimes I’d leave a cherry red heart. Really, I should’ve left flowers. That’s the decorum for visiting a grave, right? (I wouldn’t know. You don’t have one.)
8.
I considered making you one. A grave, that is. Kinda. I called the national park and asked if I could get a plaque put on your favourite bench.
(The one you’d sit on while your friends walked ‘round the lake.)
That way you’d be close to the earth – soft earth, carpeted with gum leaves and duck shit. You’d be close to it, without being beneath it. We’d be able to visit. Say hello. But – even under blue skies, splintering wood under my thighs – would I really feel you there? Could I shake the thought of that beige box, of that dark closet? Probably not.
I didn’t get a call back from the park. I didn’t chase it up. You don’t have a plaque
9.
I’m sorry.
10.
The only place I can really visit you is in your words. Did you know when you wrote poems that they’d exist beyond you? That seems like the kind of thing poets think about.
Whether or not you meant them for me, I read your words as if they’re mine. As if they’re addressed to me. I find comfort, I find tears, I find… not enough.
Then Dad emails (of course he emails)
a poem –
yours.
(mine?)
‘Marina’s Lullaby’.
11.
That’s a nice thing. A poem for me. But it doesn’t quite work as a lullaby; poetry from my dead mum doesn’t make for the most calming of bed-time reads.
(I find it hard to sleep, now, anyway. I’m always grinding my teeth.)
I love the poem, though, so thank you.
I’m grateful to Dad, too.
12.
If I could magic you out of that wardrobe, out of the pages of your poetry, and into the world… I’m not sure where I’d put you. Maybe the town you grew up in? Amongst red sand and memories.
I’m not sure it’s actually my decision. Maybe we could decide together, the siblings and me.
And Dad too.
And your brothers.
And everyone who ever loved you.
13.
Even if I could visit a stone marked with your name and lay inky irises across fresh soil, I am terrified I wouldn’t feel you there. If I didn’t feel you when I kissed you goodbye, how am I going to feel you now?
Maybe it’s less about the grave – a final resting place – and more about setting you to the wind.
Maybe it’s less about the grave – a place to visit – and more about knowing that I can never visit you again. Not really.
14.
I think the best I can do is write. Create. Make things with hands that look eerily like yours.
Do others think of how their hands look like their mother’s? Or is that only reserved for people who see a ghost when they watch their own hands chopping vegetables, holding the steering wheel, typing these words?
15.
I will write and write and hope and hope that in these little black letters, on little white pages, that I’ll find you. That I’ll be able to say hello,
and that I miss you.
and that I’m thinking of you, always. In everything I do.
